Five Incredibly Entertaining Niche Social Networks

Social networking has completely tangled itself into the fabric of our daily lives, and though Facebook is still de rigueur, people with specific interests and advertisers who want to reach those people are becoming more the norm. For an advertiser, niche networks are like targeting campaigns by demographics.

gamerDNAYesterday's news of a site refresh for gamerDNA, brings gamers a real-time source of info tied to a robust recommendation engine. The engine delivers a real-time stream of gaming content, conversations, and games that are tied to members' interests. Gamers connect their accounts to popular gaming networks, including PlayStation and Xbox Live, as well as Web-based gaming networks, and then distribute their activity to their followers on the site as well as other social networks like Twitter and Facebook. These streams of info include reviews, videos, images, trailers and user-generated content.

SuperGlued
We wrote about this site when it launched last week. Members share photos from Flickr, videos from YouTube, stories, and bragging rights about the concerts they've attended. What they've shared on Superglue they can also share with their friends on Facebook. And like new freshman connect on Facebook before ever hitting campus, the SuperGlued can connect with one another for the shows they're attending. An upcoming iPhone app promises to futher the real-time, real-world aspects of this community, enabling music aficionados to send text, video, and photos from their phone while they're watching concerts live.

MAGMA
At it's heart, Mag.ma is an aggregator for all the hot video on the Web, from what's being watched on Hulu, YouTube, Vimeo, College Humor and more. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook are processed in the algorithm to determine what are the best videos of the day. But what the site does best is that it offers you the opportunity to find all the top video content in one place, instead of having to look all over the Web for it. What's even better, is that it gives you tools to build up your discovered video collection (think of delicious bookmarks), and to share and customize your own charts.

Platogo
Play Together Online wants to be the one-stop-shop for simple online multiplayer gaming—that's Web based games created with Flash. It brings together gamers to play, produce, and connect. "Users can play alone, with or against each other; they can measure their performances against others; they can rate games and individual levels, comment on them, post them or recommend them onwards. Users can also create and share their own levels: in a racing game, for example, they have the opportunity to build their own racetracks," says the site. And for developers, revenues are driven by game sales of microtransactions to site members, as well as in-game advertising. Further, developers can be members of the community with their own profile pages to connect with gamers who can provide feedback for the future development of games.

JHB Sports
Launching nationwide in time for the beginning of the 2009 NFL season, think of JHB Sports as a social network for fantasy football. But unlike fantasy football, there's no drafting or trading position players. It's simple with the same teams starting each week. At the end of the NFL week, members are sent an e-mail reminder to log in and see how their points are adding up and how they are doing against other players in their league. There's 1 simple draft before the season starts and with 32 teams in the NFL the draft only lasts about 30-60 minutes. Once all teams are picked the draft is over. No point spread, no weekly office pools, no changes to the starting lineup plus the Player's interests are perfectly in line with those of each team—to win football games. And scoring is unbelievably simple. During the regular season, Players get 1 point for every one of their teams that win and 0 points for their teams that lose or tie each week. That's it.

The cost per League to use the site for an entire NFL Season is $80. Leagues have anywhere from 2-16 Players (8 Players is optimal). For a League with 8 Players it breaks down to $10 per player for the 5 month season or $2 per month/player.

Lynne d Johnson is a Content + Community Consultant developing content and community strategies that help brands better tell their stories and build better relationships with people toward driving bra…